The present invention relates to a vehicle seat unit having a forwardly tiltable seat cushion.
It has been attempted to tilt a vehicle seat cushion forwardly in order to make use of the portion of the vehicle floor behind the seat cushion as a luggage compartment or hold it in a forwardly tilted easy entry position for allowing the seat cushion to be readily traversed fore and aft either by a person outside the vehicle or a passenger. One example of such attempt is disclosed in the Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. Hei 7-164941(1995) or the Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open Publication No. Hei 6-50544(1994). This prior art example has a structure that brackets fixed to the front portion of a frame of the seat cushion are respectively made engageable with brackets or strikers fixed to a vehicle floor through pins or hook members to thereby allow the seat cushion to tilt forward, that is, to stand upright. In addition to this structure, at the back of the frame of the seat cushion there are arranged fixing means for fixing the cushion to the vehicle floor whereby when the seat cushion is tilted forward, the fixing means are removed to set the rear of the seat cushion frame free from the vehicle floor.
In the case of the example disclosed in the above-mentioned Publication No. Hei 7-164941(1995), since the pins fixed to the brackets on the side of the seat cushion frame are pivotally attached to the hook members of the bracket on the vehicle floor through spring means, when the seat is removed from the vehicle floor, there arises the disadvantage that it is not easy to remove the seat from the vehicle floor because of the engagement of the pins with the spring means. Conversely, in the case of the example disclosed in another Publication No. Hei 6-50544(1994), during the operation of forwardly tilting the seat cushion, the brackets at the front portion of the seat cushion frame tends to slip out of the strikers fixed to the vehicle floor so that the seat is disconnected from the vehicle floor with ease.